


nothing's wrong (when nothing's true)

by ace_verity



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Post-Season/Series 01, Season/Series 01 Spoilers, Season/Series 02 Spoilers, Season/Series 03 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:08:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22258477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ace_verity/pseuds/ace_verity
Summary: Three ways Karen didn't choose to tell Matt and Foggy that she killed James Wesley, and one time she did.
Relationships: Matt Murdock & Franklin "Foggy" Nelson & Karen Page
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	nothing's wrong (when nothing's true)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Buzzcut Season" by Lorde.  
> I don't own these characters and make no profit from this work.  
> Hope you enjoy!

i.

It’s a week, exactly, since Fisk’s arrest, and the offices of Nelson and Murdock (and Page, of course) are still filled with a lingering elation, a pervasive optimism, stemming from Fisk’s takedown. Matt, ever the realist, tries to warn Foggy and Karen that it won’t always feel this good – after all, there are bound to be guilty verdicts and stretches where even Karen’s aggressively methodical budgeting can’t keep the lights on if there are no paying clients – but even as he lectures them, a smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. He’s as happy as they are, basking in the hope that maybe, just maybe, this crazy dream of his and Foggy’s will work out. 

It’s a Friday morning when it happens, around ten. Karen has already fielded several calls from potential clients, and each time she pencils in another meeting for the coming week, Matt hears her heartbeat accelerate momentarily as she struggles to keep a smile out of her voice. 

Each time she hangs up, she lets out a breathy almost-laugh and declares, “We got another one!”

Foggy responds with a whoop, arms raised in triumph, and Matt laughs his quiet laugh, and these, Matt knows, are the moments he’ll treasure. 

Though it’s early still, Matt opens his mouth to suggest a celebratory round at Josie’s after they close up for the day, but he falters when he hears a commotion outside. A car door slams, then another; he catches the sound of police radios crackling in stereo. Two officers, then, who are now headed upstairs. 

He hears one of them ask, “This is where she works, right? You sure she’ll be here?”

The other grunts in affirmation, adding with a snort of laughter, “Think it’s pretty funny, a killer working for a pair of lawyers,” and the first officer chuckles too. 

Matt stands, moving without thinking out of his office into the reception area. 

Karen sees his grim expression and immediately asks, a note of fear wavering in her throat, “Matt? Is everything okay?”

Foggy hears her and rises, moving to stand on the other side of Karen’s desk. “Matt?”

A knock at the door startles Karen, who huffs a nervous laugh, casts a last look at Matt, and moves to the door. 

Matt tries to warn her, but he’s paralyzed; later, he wishes he had pulled Karen away, pushed her onto the fire escape, put her on a train out of the city to somewhere far away. 

But she opens the door, and as he hears the officers step into the room and ask if she is Karen Page, he hears her heart rate accelerate, fear emanating from her in waves.

Foggy tries to step in front of her, asking the officers what they want with her, but he is ignored. 

“Karen Page, you’re under arrest for the murder of James Wesley,” the larger officer says, motioning to his partner to handcuff her. 

“ _ What _ ?” Foggy turns to Karen, then Matt. “This is outrageous – there’s no way – Karen?”

She’s silent, turning around to allow herself to be handcuffed without protest. Matt smells salt in the air and hears her breathing hitch – she’s crying, quietly, as she’s read her rights. 

One of the officers places a hand on her shoulder to turn her toward the door, but she resists, leaning toward Matt and Foggy. 

“Please – I’m so sorry – Foggy, Matt –” Her voice is choked, and Matt can feel her eyes on his face, begging for support. 

Foggy reaches her first, embracing her; she sobs once before regaining some semblance of composure. Matt follows, pulling her tight against his chest despite the officers’ obvious frustration at their display. 

“We’ll fix this, Karen,” he tells her, and means it. 

Foggy nods and tells her, without a trace of doubt, that they’ll represent her. “Whatever you need.”

One of the officers clears his throat, impatient, and Karen straightens up, shoulders back and head high, and allows herself to be led out of the office without a second glance. Matt can hear her heartbeat fluttering like a trapped bird — she’s terrified.

“We need to get to the station,” Matt says as soon as he hears them descending the stairs. He feels Foggy’s eyes on him and realizes, detecting a lingering scent of salt, that Foggy is holding back tears.

“Did you know?” Foggy’s voice is soft and tremulous, betraying his shock.

Matt shakes his head and moves to collect his briefcase and cane, hearing Foggy do the same. “I knew something happened – she wasn’t herself -- but between Elena, and Ben… I thought it was going to get better.” 

Guilt washes over him as he connects the dots: the night he came to the office, while he wasn’t talking to Foggy, and detected a not-so-faint aroma of hard liquor and tears, fear and vomit, lingering on Karen’s skin. The way she still flinches at the mention of Fisk and his counterparts, even now that they had been taken down once and for all. 

He understands, now, why a note of anxiety, of  _ fear _ has appeared in her voice, revealing tension in every word – like a taut rubber band about to snap; he knows now why she stays at the office later than them, arrives earlier than them, to the point that Matt is certain that she sleeps at her desk some nights.

He mentally shakes himself, putting aside his thoughts, and joins Foggy at the door.

\---

Foggy really, truly does not understand how his life turned into something from a poorly-plotted Batman comic. A superpowered best friend, he can take. But now his other best friend has been arrested for murder, and what’s more, she isn't even denying it. Foggy needs a vacation, he really does. 

And then he and Matt enter the interrogation room, and any attempt to find humor in his woefully chaotic life sputters and dies, because – that’s  _ Karen _ , his  _ friend _ , handcuffed to the table just as she was when they met a month ago. This time, though, she can't meet his eye, doesn't attempt to speak. 

At Matt’s prompting, the officers remove Karen’s handcuffs, albeit reluctantly, and give them the room. The silence lingers for a moment until Foggy physically can’t take it any longer.

He clears his throat. “Can you tell us what happened, Ms. Page?”

He sees her flinch as though she had been slapped, and he immediately corrects himself. “Sorry -- Karen.” 

He glances at Matt quickly, to gauge his take on the situation. Matt’s head is tilted, and his laser-focus on Karen is evident. 

Karen swallows hard, finally lifting her head to look at them – first Foggy, then Matt. Matt must sense her gaze on him, because he reaches across the table and rests his hand on hers. Before he can speak words of encouragement, Karen begins to talk. 

“Foggy,” she starts, “do you remember when we went to Josie’s when – when you and Matt were fighting?”

He nods, not daring to speak.

“I went home, after that,” she continues, “and I was, um, fumbling with my keys outside my door, and behind me – behind me, Wesley, he – grabbed me, and chloroformed me. And when I woke up, I was in a chair, in a warehouse, and he was sitting across from me, and he set a gun on the table between us.

“He didn’t want to hurt me – at least, not right away. He wanted me to work for Fisk, convince Ben that Fisk was on the good side – and I couldn’t, you  _ know _ I couldn’t.” She lets out a shaky breath, and Foggy sees tears spilling over in the corners of her eyes. 

“But he told me that if I didn’t, he would – he’d kill you both, and everyone I’ve ever cared about, and then me last of all, and I  _ couldn’t  _ – I just couldn’t bear it. And then his phone rang, and when he wasn’t looking, I grabbed the gun, and I – seven times, I shot him seven times in the chest and ran. I threw the gun in the river, and – here we are, I guess.”

Foggy’s speechless, but Matt leans forward. “Karen, did you believe that your life was in danger, and you had no other option?”

She nods, then says aloud, “Yes.”

“Would he have killed you if you tried to run, or if you had refused to cooperate?”

“Yes,” she repeats, voice trembling. 

Foggy finally finds his voice. “Karen, there isn’t a jury in the world that would convict you. It’s self-defense, plain and simple.”

Then Matt asks what Foggy has been wondering all along. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“You were fighting, and –” her voice drops to a whisper. “And I didn’t want – I was afraid that – I didn’t want to lose you both. You’re all I have, really.”

“Never.”

The ferocity of Foggy’s own voice startles him, but he continues. “We love you, Karen, and this doesn’t change a thing.” He pauses, and adds, “Besides, you’re the only person who knows how to work the demonic office copy machine, so… you’re kind of stuck with us, honestly.”

It's a weak joke, in Foggy's opinion, but it has the intended effect: Karen cracks a tiny smile, and Matt follows suit, and Foggy thinks, _We’ll be okay._

ii.

It’s a week, exactly, since Fisk’s arrest; Friday night, and Matt’s on patrol as usual. It's been quiet recently, and he allows himself to take pride in that for a brief second before squashing the feeling down in the name of Catholic humility. 

He considers checking on Foggy's block before heading home for the night, then recalls Foggy mentioning a date with Marci and decides that it isn't necessary. Instead, he thinks, he'll take the long way home to pass by Karen’s place – she's been out of sorts lately, and he can hear the lie in her voice when she insists she's fine. He adamantly blocks out the voice in his head that wonders, sounding suspiciously like Foggy, if his vigilance is an invasion of her privacy, and heads across Hell's Kitchen.

It isn't hard to detect her heartbeats, and when he reaches the roof of her building, he stops. She lives on the second floor, he knows, and he focuses his attention there. 

He detects the odor of hard alcohol that’s lingered around her on mornings where she was particularly on edge, both exhausted and jumpy at once; he smells Thai takeout in the fridge, still cooling – that must have been her dinner. He zeroes in again on her heartbeat, which pulses loud and rapid. A possible effect of the liquor, he knows, or more likely of her emotional state.

She's crying, quietly, and every so often pauses to take a long pull from a glass bottle which, Matt noted with alarm, is near-empty.

He's contemplating his options – either knock on her window in his full Daredevil regalia, or come back as Matt Murdock, or wait until tomorrow morning to try to get her to talk over lunch – when he hears her speak.

“I killed him,” she says, quiet and deliberate, as though testing the words. 

Matt is shocked for a moment – she couldn’t have killed Daniel, he had heard her telling the truth – when she speaks again. 

“I killed him. I killed…” She breaks off with a hiccupping sob, then finishes, “James Wesley.”

This seems to open the floodgates: he hears Karen fall back against something hard – a wall, he guesses – and a sob tears through her. 

Matt’s stunned. He’d known, of course, that something wasn’t right, but he’d never expected something like this

_ I should have been there _ , he thinks fiercely. But even now, with Karen two floors below his feet, he’s at a loss. 

He weighs his options. He could knock on her window and attempt to comfort her as Daredevil, but she’d have no clue why Daredevil had suddenly developed an interest in her emotional health, and revealing  _ his _ secret wouldn’t help matters. He could return as Matt Murdock and knock on her door, but then what? Say,  _ I thought you might like some company; by the way, have you killed anyone lately? _

And he couldn’t leave – not after he’d been too distracted by his confrontation with Foggy, too injured from his fight with Nobu, to figure out what was wrong or at the very least keep an eye on her. He couldn’t even contemplate the thought of leaving her alone again. 

So he sits down, settling behind a ventilation unit to shield him from prying eyes, and resolves to stay there until Karen goes to bed. 

He’s there for a long time. Her sobs continue, and eventually the bottle is completely drained. Even after that, she remains slumped and still for nearly an hour; if it weren’t for her heartbeat, he’d think she had fallen asleep.

Finally, around one in the morning, he hears her stir.

“Shit,” she rasps, hauling herself to her feet. Matt hears her stumble across her apartment and land on the floor in a much smaller room, followed by the unmistakable sound of vomiting. 

After a few moments, her breathing and heart rate are steady once more, and she moves again – first to wash her face, then to collapse with a groan on her bed. 

She’s asleep within moments, and as Matt listens to the sound of her breathing, his heart twists with concern, fear, and guilt. And  _ anger _ – not at her, but at the circumstances that brought them to this point, that sent Karen to find comfort in drink with blood on her hands, that keep Matt from daring to comfort her in person. 

He lingers for a while yet, even though she’s deeply asleep, and is briefly overwhelmed by the magnitude of what lies ahead. Sooner or later, he knows, the truth must come out – both his truth, and Karen’s. A million possibilities swirl in his head. She could be arrested at any moment, if the police discover a body or a weapon or a crime scene. She might leave him and Foggy, unwilling to burden them with her secret and unable to maintain a façade any longer. The worst possibility – and Matt can barely bring himself to consider it – is that Fisk will find out that Karen Page killed his best friend and confidante, if he hasn’t already. If that’s the case, Matt knows, then she is in grave danger. 

Far below, Karen shifts and sighs in her sleep, and Matt’s focus returns to her.

_Later_ , he thinks. He’ll come up with a plan in the morning. For now, he’ll keep his silent vigil. 

iii.

She never tells, and they stop asking, eventually. 

Matt still notices when she is unfocused, restless, and exhausted; he knows she spends nights in their office sometimes, but as time passes, those nights become increasingly infrequent until they seem to stop altogether. 

There's an edge to her voice that never quite disappears, and when she insists fiercely that she can protect herself, her heart beats strong and steady, because she tells the truth. 

The Punisher case comes and leaves in its wake a shattered dream and the three of them, adrift and apart. Between Frank Castle and her work for the Bulletin, she doesn't have time to dwell on the past, even if the past rears its head from time to time, searing the image of blood on a white dress shirt on the inside of her eyelids when she wakes gasping from a nightmare. 

Sometimes it's not Wesley. Sometimes it's Foggy, or Frank, or Matt. On the worst nights, it's Kevin in the chair, with seven holes in his chest and the gun in her hands. 

Then Matt is dead, and alive again, and he resurrects Nelson and Murdock when he comes back from the dead. Only a Catholic could pull off that kind of miracle, she thinks ironically. But she has her home back, and like Frank told her months ago, she plans to hold tight with both hands and never let go. 

She knows what will happen if she tells them, can envision twin looks of shock, hurt, disgust,  _ loathing _ crossing their faces, the very same look that crossed her father’s face when he sat across from her in the diner and told her not to come to her brother’s funeral, to leave and never return. 

Foggy, she imagines, would mostly feel betrayed, hurt that she didn’t tell them earlier, hurt that she allowed him to think of her as something good and pure and worthy of protection. She remembers what he’d said to her the day after she’d killed Wesley:  _ “You can’t just run around killing people and call yourself a human being.” _ Less than human, that’s what she’d be to him. No better than an animal. 

Matt would pity her, and she wonders if that isn’t worse. He’d wear a sorrowful face, never speaking his judgment, but it would pierce her anyway. He’d speak of redemption, then go to church and pray a Rosary for the salvation of her soul, finishing up with a prayer of thanksgiving that he’d never ended up like her.

Thinking of it leaves a bitter taste in her mouth, and she feels justified, now, in her choice to keep her secret to herself. 

And so the days come and go: she laughs with them, dines and drinks and dances with them, wins cases with them, and she is living, vibrant and alive.

She refuses to ask  _ what if _ , and though the secret remains bitter and sharp inside her, she tells herself that she has made the right call. 

She doesn’t tell, and they stop asking, eventually. It’s better this way.

\+ 1.

It happens like this. 

It’s been six months, exactly, since Fisk’s arrest, and Karen can’t take it any longer.  She checks her watch for what seems like the millionth time – only 10:13 in the morning, and she huffs impatiently. 

Matt must hear her – he lifts his head, pulls out an earbud, and asks, “Karen? Everything alright?”

By now, Foggy’s paying attention too. Karen’s sick and tired of saying she’s  _ fine _ , so instead she says, “Um, can I talk to you both? It’ll just take a minute.”

They’re both instantly alert, and she leads them into the conference room. They sit, her on one side of the table and the two of them side-by-side across from her, and it takes her back to their first meeting. So much has changed since then, she thinks, and yet she wouldn’t trade what she has for the world.

That’s what makes this such an incredible risk, and for a moment every cell in her body screams for her to bluff, tell them she wants a raise or a new office coffeepot or help moving apartments instead of telling them the truth that’s been eating her from the inside out for months. 

But their faces are open, curious yet always kind, and tears well up unexpectedly. She takes a deep breath, forcing herself back to calm, and clasps her hands in front of her on the table. 

“I need to tell you both something,” she begins, and feels a bit proud of herself when her voice doesn’t shake. 

They both straighten, adopting near-identical expressions of focus, as if their worlds have zeroed down to her alone. A wave of fondness washes over her.  _ My boys _ , she thinks, and feels peace settle inside her. 

“Not now, not here,” she adds quickly. “One of our places, I think – and no alcohol.”

Foggy looks like he wants to crack a joke, but restrains himself and gallantly offers, “My place is free. We don’t usually hang out there, but maybe that would be better?”

“That would be wonderful. Thanks, Foggy. Tonight okay?” It’s a Thursday, which maybe isn’t ideal, but if things go badly she can always take Friday off and give them space over the weekend. She doesn’t think she can put it off any longer

They both nod, and Foggy glances at Matt as if he’s almost surprised that he’s free – and yeah, they’re definitely keeping something from her, but maybe they’ll open up when she does. 

“Okay,” she says, surprised at how easy that was. “Meeting adjourned, I guess.” 

\---

They close up fifteen minutes early, since none of them had been able to really focus for the past hour, and when they get to Foggy’s apartment, they sit – Karen in an armchair and Matt and Foggy on a futon that’s seen better days. 

“Before we start,” Foggy says, “is this a food before, during, or after kind of conversation?”

Karen doesn’t want to lose her nerve by waiting any longer, and she isn’t sure that she can discuss how she was kidnapped and escaped by killing her captor between bites of pad thai, so she says quite definitively, “After.”

Foggy and Matt wait expectantly.  _ Now or never, Page _ , she tells herself, and starts to talk. 

It’s easy at first – she recounts how she and Foggy had met at Josie’s, how she’d headed back to her apartment frustrated with their fighting and anxious about her trip upstate with Ben, how she’d been fumbling with her keys at her door when he grabbed her. 

Then it gets harder.

She tells them about waking up disoriented and dizzy, about his hands sickeningly gentle on her arms as he helped her sit up straight, and her voice starts to tremble.

She feels Foggy’s hand on her knee and leans into the warmth. She closes her eyes – she can’t look at them, not until she’s done. 

She tells them how he threatened them, how he knew their names and used them like knives against her, how he vowed not to kill her until she’d wept til she had no tears left to cry.

And she tells them, the words dropping from her lips like stones, like nails in a coffin, how his phone had rung and she’d grabbed the gun, turned it on him. How, when he sneered at her, she squeezed the trigger once. Then again, and again – seven times in total. 

She tells them, the words coming fast, how blood had seeped through his shirt in seven spots, how his eyes haunted her and haunt her still, how she’d wiped away her fingerprints with her sleeve and thrown the gun in the river and run home, how she’d drunk an entire bottle of liquor and dreamed that Fisk was strangling her against her kitchen counter, and how she’d woken up panicked at three in the morning and come to the office because she couldn’t stand to spend one more second in her apartment.

How she’d seen Foggy’s reflection in the window and honest-to-God thought that she was about to die, just for a split second. 

“And… you know the rest, I guess,” she finishes, throat dry and eyes scorched by tears. 

She counts down from five and opens her eyes. 

Matt looks pained, and Foggy seems like he’s about to cry.

“Jesus, Karen,” Foggy finally whispers. Matt’s still silent, mouth working a bit like he wants to speak but doesn’t have the words.

“I understand if you want me to – to quit, or to – break contact, I won’t be angry, I get it –” Karen says in a rush, and Matt interrupts her.

“No, Karen, we’d never – you did nothing wrong. We’re just glad you’re safe, and I – I’m  _ so sorry _ that I wasn’t able to protect you from that.”

Which, alright, she’s not sure how a blind lawyer would be able to keep her safe from a criminal mastermind, and she thinks Foggy can spot her bewilderment, because he quickly jumps in. 

“Matt’s right, Karen, we weren’t there when you needed us, and we’re both really sorry. We’d never make you leave – Karen, we care about you, we’d  _ never _ …”

Karen’s definitely crying, now, no sense denying it. She tilts her head back as if that would keep the tears from falling and takes a deep, shaky breath. “You guys… I don’t deserve you.”

”Karen.” Matt’s voice is low and deliberate. “You deserve – you deserve the world. Don’t ever think otherwise.” 

She doesn’t know what to say to that, so she wipes tears from her cheeks and allows Foggy to pull her into a bear hug. Matt joins them a moment later, and they stand there for a long time. 

Finally, she shifts, and when the others pull away, she clears her throat and says, “Can we get Thai now? I’m starved.”

It surprises Matt into one of his startled laughs, and Foggy announces, “Yes! Thai for all! And we’re getting mango sticky rice for dessert – don’t make that face, Matt, I don’t care if it feels weird in your mouth, you’ll eat it and you’ll like it!”

Later, they’re squashed together on the futon, Karen in the middle, finishing their takeout. Foggy is expounding at length about their college exploits, and Matt is laughing so hard that he can’t even speak, and Karen thinks that the glowing, golden feeling in the air might be enough to drive the nightmares away, even just for a night.

For the first time in months, she can breathe, and she settles back, looking at Matt and Foggy – _my boys_ , she thinks – and realizes that they are going to be okay. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> I love feedback, and if you have any suggestions for what I write next for the Daredevil fandom, let me know in a comment! I can't promise that it'll happen, but I'm always looking for new ideas.


End file.
